Richard Jackson

NEW YORK (AP) — The publisher of acclaimed children’s books by Judy Blume, Paula Fox and others has died. Richard Jackson was 84.

Simon & Schuster’s Children’s Publishing announced Monday that Jackson died Oct. 2. Jackson was editorial director of Richard Jackson Books at Simon & Schuster.

Jackson’s career dated back to the 1960s, when he co-founded Bradbury Press. He would soon help transform children’s publishing by releasing Blume’s candid classic “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” a book both acclaimed and censored over the following decades.

He also published such prize winners as Fox’s “The Slave Dancer” and Susan Patron’s “The Higher Power of Lucky.”